Chicago Tribune - July 21, 2003
William Neikirk, Tribune senior correspondent

The thunder from the right is not loud enough yet to qualify as a revolt against the president, but conservatives are becoming sharper in criticizing Bush for failing to keep federal spending under control even as he pleases them with tax cuts.

Democrats have launched a major attack on Bush for the record federal deficits the White House announced last week, and criticism over higher spending from the Republicans' conservative base could magnify their points.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a conservative who voted against the proposal to add a $400 billion drug benefit to Medicare, said bluntly that Bush's inability to hold the line on spending could hurt him politically as the federal deficit soars into record territory over the next two years.

"I've always felt that sooner or later voters, if they want big government, will return to the genuine article, and that's the Democrats," Flake said. "If [Democrats] were in charge, we wouldn't be allowing this kind of spending. We'd throw up roadblocks everywhere we could. I just can't imagine that we wouldn't be wreaking havoc."

Stephen Moore, an economist and president of Club for Growth, a political action committee seeking to elect conservative candidates, agreed. "This is one of the biggest-spending White Houses we have had since Lyndon B. Johnson was president," Moore said.

Moore praised Bush for his tax cuts, saying they should help the economy, but criticized the president's support of the Medicare bill, his signing of a huge farm subsidy package last year and his support of a $15 billion AIDS program.

"We have replaced tax-and-spend Democrats with tax-cut-and-spend Republicans," Moore said. With such actions, he added, "I don't think he [Bush] has a lot of credibility left on the budget."

Christine Iverson, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, disputed this.

"It is important to keep in mind that without President Bush and a Republican Congress, there would be no tax relief and there would be $2 trillion in new spending which the Democrats have proposed since he took office," Iverson said.

She said Bush and the GOP Congress have "done an excellent job of addressing the many priorities, and are doing it in a fiscally responsible way." On the Medicare drug plan, she said that while Democrats "played politics" on the issue, Republicans delivered.

But researchers at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that is often aligned with conservatives, noted that federal spending--excluding military and entitlement programs such as Social Security--has risen 20.8 percent in Bush's years in office.

That rate far exceeds the growth in spending during the first three years of the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush or Jimmy Carter, according to Cato analysts Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven.

Much of the higher spending stems from non-military support for the war in Iraq, as well as security requirements following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But Bush also has increased spending in other areas, such as the farm bill and education, that conservatives believe went too far.

Last week, the White House projected that the federal deficit would hit a record $455 billion this fiscal year and jump to another record $475 billion in fiscal 2004, before declining as an economic recovery takes hold.

Stuart Butler, vice president for domestic and economic studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said conservative opposition to the Bush-supported Medicare prescription drug bill is hardening.

Butler said Bush violated his pledge to support a Medicare prescription drug bill only if it included broader Medicare reform. As a joint House-Senate committee takes up the measure, he added, "I think it is in serious trouble."

Many conservatives "are beginning to realize that if they vote for this, it would be the largest increase in the welfare state since Johnson," Butler said.

But for now, it's clear that a solid majority of conservatives backs Bush. The White House, guided by political adviser Karl Rove, has gone out of its way to please the party's right wing on several major issues to avoid the kind of conservative rebellion that damaged his father's re-election chances.

At Americans for Tax Reform, headed by conservative political guru and Bush supporter Grover Norquist, a staffer who asked not to be identified noted that the president has adopted the conservative agenda almost point-by-point on such issues as education, taxes, gun control and deregulation.

But the rumbling on the right continues, said Heritage Foundation economist Brian Riedl: "Conservatives are extremely distressed about the rate of federal spending right now."

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